


Just To See You Smile Again

by westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Angst, Episode: s02e10 Noël, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-06-10
Updated: 2005-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-30 13:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15097823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist/pseuds/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist
Summary: Josh's response toWhen Our Time Has Come.





	Just To See You Smile Again

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

**Just To See You Smile Again**

**by:** lordess renegade 

**Character(s):** Josh  
**Pairing(s):** Josh/Donna  
**Category(s):** Angst   
**Rating:** YTEEN  
**Disclaimer:** Jocelyn belongs to Kevin Hearn and Thinbuckle. Josh and Donna belong to Sorkin, NBC, and Wellsatan (tm someone wittier than me).  
**Summary:** Josh's response to When Our Time Has Come.  
**Author's Note:** Second in the Nightlightverse, post-Noel AU

_I decided in my head_  
That I should come back from the dead  
Just to see you smile again  
To hear you laugh, to hold your hand…  
\--Kevin Hearn 

First of all, you're right. I did hear you. 

I saw you that night, you know. I mean, logic tells me that of course I didn't see you. You were behind the window, and I was gone, on a trip down memory lane's evil side roads. But you were with me, somehow. There's this image burned into my brain...maybe it's imagination, but it feels too real for that. Maybe I just needed to believe that you were there. I don't know. 

You're standing there in this little side room, and you look like you've been through hell and back. Your hair is falling out of its ponytail and drifting into your eyes, but you don't notice. You're playing with your necklace, in that way that you do when you're uncommonly nervous, and you're staring blankly ahead of you, looking straight through whatever you're seeing, clearly lost in another time, another place. It looks like you threw on the nearest clothes and ran out of the house, and I'm no expert on these things, but I'm pretty sure you're not wearing any makeup. 

I don't think I've ever seen you look more beautiful. 

Sam told me how you stood there the whole time I was in surgery. Mrs. Bartlet tried to get you to go get some rest, or to eat something, but you wouldn't leave. I know I never thanked you for that, but I don't want you to ever think that I'm not beyond grateful. It's just that I'm not Sam, or Toby. If I tried to make some kind of coherent thanks come out of my mouth, chances are it would come out all wrong. I have my moments of verbal brilliance, of course, but trust me when I tell you that wouldn't have been one of them. 

I was glad when I heard that Toby was the one who told you. I guess it's not surprising that I remember even less about that night than you do, but I remember him finding me, as clearly as if it just happened. I could hear him shouting my name, but in my fuzzy mind at that moment, I was way too busy thinking to answer him. They say your life flashes before your eyes when you think you're going to die, and I can't really say if that's what was happening, but I just couldn't stop _thinking_. Physically, I was numb at that point. I'm sure you'll think I'm saying this just to make you feel better, but I honestly wasn't in any pain. I was worried, though, and I couldn't figure out why. I knew there was something I was supposed to be upset about, I knew that something had happened, and I should be making sure everyone was ok, but I couldn't remember why. 

It wasn't until I saw Toby that I thought of you. He came around the corner and stopped dead when he saw me, and the first thought that flashed through my mind was _thank God it's not Donna_. The look in his eyes was heartbreaking. I remember thinking that I didn't think I could handle seeing that look in your eyes. Something was wrong with me, I knew it just by looking at him, and I started to get dizzy. 

Just thinking your name brought in a whole new flood of thoughts, memories mostly, and the panicked idea that you had been there with me, and where were you now? It took me a few moments as I retraced my steps that night, ignoring the commotion around me, Toby's frantic calls for a doctor, the flashing lights, the running feet, but I finally remembered that you hadn't come, that you hadn't been with me walking out to the motorcade. I've never felt so relieved in my life. 

Those first few days in the hospital are pretty much a daze, but I remember that every time I opened my eyes, you were there. I've always known, ever since that day you waltzed into my office and my life, that you were one of the strongest people I would ever meet. But if I hadn't known it already, the stories I've heard about you during those first few weeks after the shooting would have convinced me. It's not just Sam that's commented on it, you know. I heard about it from CJ, and from Mrs. Bartlet, and my mother. Even Leo, when I came back to work, asked me quite pointedly if I was aware what a valuable and dedicated assistant I had in you. 

I told him he had no idea. 

I don't think I could have done it. Just the thought of seeing you like that, in a hospital bed, hooked up to tubes and wires and beeping monitors, it gives me chills. That smell alone, that awful sterile smell, is enough to make me cringe. And the thought of it being someone I care about in that bed, in that operating room, I don't think I could handle it. I never understood doctors, and nurses, and people who can walk through hospitals without getting the slightest bit queasy. I'm sorry you're not one of those people anymore...it's a useful skill to have. 

But for the record, there's no way you're blaming that on me. 

I spent a lot of time during my recovery thinking about the same thing that occupied your mind in the waiting room that night. What if you had been there? Would it have changed things? And the answer is invariably of course. Even if things had turned out exactly the same, it would have changed _you_. And maybe I'm being selfish here, but I don't think I could have dealt with that. 

On some level Rosslyn changed all of us, even people like you and Mrs. Landingham and Mrs. Bartlet who weren't there. I know that. But I think about how you could have been affected if you had been there, and I am thankful every day that you weren't. When I came back to work, it was you who restored that sense of normalcy to my days. Not to say that nothing changed. There were times when I would look up from my desk and see you in the hall, your eyes shadowed with worry as you watched me, thinking I didn't notice you. But to my face, in front of me, you were your old self, the same Donna you had been before the shooting. I never told you how much that helped, but I need you to know that it did, more than anything else, in fact. 

I think you always have known me better than I know myself. So it doesn't surprise me that you saw it coming, when even I didn't. It wasn't something I planned, you know, or something I expected. It just...it sounds cliché to say it, but honestly...it just happened. 

You were annoying the crap out of me that day, you know. I smile when I think about it now, of course, but at the time I could have throttled you if you said "Yo-Yo Ma rules!" to me one more time. You're right, though. He really does. I probably would have enjoyed the concert at any other time, but that night all I could hear were the sirens. 

I never told anyone that. I didn't realize it myself until then. When I heard music, after the shooting, it never sounded like music to me. I remember one night when I was still at home recovering, and I had been doing too much thinking. I had been thinking about Joanie a lot, and I guess it makes sense. A person comes that close to death, he begins to wonder if the people he lost before would have been waiting for him on the other side. But anyway, I had been thinking about her, and it made me want to play the Ave Maria. So I got up, and I put it in, and I couldn't enjoy it anymore. 

It was the same thing when Yo-Yo Ma started playing, but worse. So much worse. I watched his fingers move up and down the strings, and I watched the bow slide across them, and I couldn't hear the cello at all. I couldn't hear music. I heard sirens. 

It all came back then, all the details of that night that I had blocked out the first time around. I didn't pay any attention to the paramedics, to Toby, to the woman who knelt beside me. I was busy thinking about you, worrying about you. But as I listened to the sirens scream in my head, it all came back, the blue and red lights flashing crazily across the paramedics' faces as they kneeled over me and poked and prodded, their voices, deceptively calm, thinly veiling deep concern. 

Their gloved hands, slick with my blood. 

I don't know how I made it out of the room. I don't remember getting home, but somehow I was there, and I desperately needed a drink. My hands shook as I filled the glass, and it clattered against the table when I tried to put it down. I wasn't thinking of you in that moment. I wasn't thinking of Joanie, or of my father. I was thinking of the pilot. 

You made fun of me when you gave me his file, said something about anticipating my every need. That's not a joke, you know. You always did seem to know what I needed. _That's_ why you came to my apartment that night. Not woman's intuition. It was just you being you, anticipating what I needed before I even knew I needed it. 

I didn't think about it. I didn't think about you, or my friends, or my mother. I didn't think about what would happen, what the consequences would be, who I would hurt. I didn't think at all, in that split second. I had done too much thinking in the last seven months. It was time to stop thinking. 

The noise of the breaking window drowned out the sirens. 

For that split second, I was safe. All I heard was shattering glass, splintering and tumbling onto the sidewalk below, and it was a welcome relief. I watched the pieces fall, seeing them sparkling under the streetlamps, and there was a beauty to them that I can't describe. Life slowed down for me in those moments, as I stood at my window and watched shards of glass rain down to the ground. There was a silence in my mind, a peace that I hadn't realized was missing. 

It was then that I noticed the blood, and someone hit the fast forward button on my life. 

Things were moving too quickly for me then. There was no time. No time to do all the things I needed to do, say all the things I needed to say. I panicked then, and I reached for the phone, but my arms weren't long enough. I took one step towards it, and then another, but my apartment had grown as I stood watching the glass, it had stretched to unmanageable proportions. Darkness started to creep in at the edges of my vision, and I fought it, taking another step, but my legs abandoned me, and I found my floor rushing up to meet me. 

I thought of you then. I thought of the look in Toby's eyes that night, and I prayed that it would never reach yours. I began to pray for my life, not so that I could go on living, but so that I could keep you from that pain, that I could shield you from going through this all over again. Once would have been too much for me. I couldn't bear to let you go through it a second time. My mind filled with what ifs and if onlys. If only I had stopped to think for a split second. If only I had been able to fight the sirens in my mind. If only I had anticipated the grief, and the pain, and the tears... 

I miss you, Donna. 

I heard you knocking, in those last moments before I stopped hearing anything. I heard you, and in my mind I got up off the floor, and I wrapped a towel around my hand, and I opened the door. I stood there, and time stretched around us as I told you about the sirens, and the window, and everything else that I had never been able to bring myself to tell you. 

I died with a smile on my face, Donna, because in my mind I was telling you I loved you. 

I wasn't asleep that night in the hospital, you know. I was drifting, halfway between sleep and consciousness, when I felt you take my hand. You started talking then, and I could hear the tears in your voice as you told me the toll this had taken on you. I wanted nothing more than to open my eyes and fling myself out of the bed and take you in my arms so you could cry and I could prove to you that I was alive and I loved you. 

But the body is a traitor sometimes, at the worst times, and I could not move, not even to pry my rebellious eyelids open. So I lay there, and I listened, and I cried in my heart because my exhausted and medicated body would not let me do it on the outside. And when you stopped talking, when your voice became so choked with tears that you could barely get out those last words, and you lowered your head into your arms and sobbed, I squeezed your hand because it was the only thing I could do. 

I didn't think you felt it. 

You should go to bed, you know. It's late, and Sam will need you to be at your best in the morning. He needs you now, as much as I ever did. He was never as dependent on Cathy as I was on you, but he's not the same Sam he used to be. He's going to need you to get through this, and you'll need him. I know you don't think so now, but trust me. 

I know you, though. You'll lay on the couch, crying into my sweatshirt that I left at your apartment on one of those drunken nights when I yelled at the cats, and you'll cry until you're too exhausted to cry anymore, and then you'll sleep, and you'll dream about me. And time will pass, and one day you'll realize that you made it through work without having to hide in the bathroom to have a good cry at lunchtime. And more time will go by, and you'll wake up one morning to discover that you hadn't cried yourself to sleep the night before. 

Someday, I want you to be able to remember me and smile. I want to see your face light up as you tell some new friend or new boss about the crazy guy you used to work for, who thought that philately was a dirty word, and who once met with a polling expert wearing fishing waders, and who you would never in a million years-unless he was about to be fired-bring coffee to. I'm going to wait for that day, because that's when I'll know that you're going to be ok. 

But for now, the best I hope for is that you smile when you see me in your dreams. 

Goodnight, Donnatella. Sleep well. 


End file.
